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I don't expect to much action here for a few days at least, but add whatever you want as soon as you're ready.

I guess I like reading about all the relationships people are making, and all the wild sex that is taking place! Maya is such a flirt I like how she has the boys eating out of her hands.

The voyage out made me think of "Survivor". Tribes, leaders, alliances, councils, duplicitousness...but sadly noone got voted off the Ares.

I wonder what will happen with Maya's 'stowaway'. That seems an important element that has been parked for the time being...

The solar flare is an incredible piece of verisimilitude, and it is a perfect example of what I find most exciting in this series. It is a genuine concern of space travel, one that seems almost mundane. It's invisible; it requires instrumentation to read the danger; yet Robinson, using the flight into protection and Boone, generates real fear and stress. This book just feels so realistic, and has remained that way 14 years later.

I'm with you on the sex, Qylie. It feels a bit like the first social split with Earth.

And I can see that Survivor feel, Peter. I'd not thought of it that way before.

What I thought was interesting about the voyage out was how leadership develops among the travelers. They begin with a leadership imposed by governments on earth, but as they get farther from home, they drift towards natural leaders, like Boone. He identifies this process himself when he discusses how people tend to agree with people they like. He understands this process, maybe even manipulates it, and therefore isn't threatend by Frank. Ironically, Frank understands it, too, and is absolutely threatened by Boone's relationship with Maya and the rest of the group.

Yeah, that leadership dynamic is very well done, and Boone is a fascinating character. This is one of the keys to why I enjoy Frank so much as a character (I don't know if I can say "I like him," but I love his presence in these books). Ronbinson handles Boone and Chalmers very well. And all the rest too, but the Boone-Chalmers stuff is a favourite focus of mine.

Does anyone else hear Arkady with a thick Russian accent in your head, especially when he's making 'toasts'?

And speaking of Russians, that's the only piece of this puzzle that doesn't quite fit ... anymore. I grew up with M.A.D. and fear of communism crammed down my throat, but by the time this book was published, even I could tell the Russians would not be such a major player in such an endeavor.

Reading this chapter made me hear Joanna Russ in my ear, telling me that . (Okay, not really, because I have no idea what her voice actually sounded like.)

I'm not sure I agree about the Russians.

I'll admit, I was not enthralled with the love triangle, and was ready to pop Maya out the nearest airlock. It wasn't so much that she was playing the men against each other (that part I understood). It was all the angst that went with it. You're the leader of the Russian team, and you're behaving like a seventh grade girl?

Huh, I didn't process it that way. I read it as, she was sleeping with them to blow off steam/relieve stress, and cooled things off with Frank when she started noticing he was not right in the head. I didn't notice a whole lot of angst over the relationship stuff ... but maybe I just missed it. Maybe a little, but that seemed somewhat widespread.

It wasn't so much her interactions with the men, but the woman - I can't remember if it was Nadia or Ann who got stuck listing to her carry on about the boys - so again, junior high school. I just found it distracting from the story.

(view spoiler)[It was Nadia, and that's actually in the next section - now that I've started it I agree with you. :) Poor Nadia! (hide spoiler)]

Voyage out answered some of the questions raised in Festival Night but I'm still trying to figure out the relationship between Frank and John.
The stow-away freaks me out and therefore added tension to the story. I was miffed that Maya and John don't try to do something about it after she confides in him. While everyone leaves ares seems like a perfect time to catch the stow-away and his accomplice(s).
I kinda agree with the argument Arkady makes for doing things their own way.

That explains it, Sid. I kept thinking that the author wanted me to like Maya a whole lot more than I actually did. Mostly she just made me roll my eyes. A lot.

Nadia is my favourite. Her and Arkady.

The stow-away is an interesting piece of the story mostly because the decisions made around the stowaway are pivotal and say so much about those who make the decisions. Can I just say that this is where I really begin to dislike Boone?

I have to say, Phyllis drives me up the wall in this section, but I admit that is because I love Arkady and what he has to say.

But back to Maya, since this is her section after all; I am most interested in the way she believes she's in control, or that any of them are. She sees this leadership power, she grasps at it, it seems to be the primary motivation for her coupling with Boone (and even her initial coupling with Frank), but while a touch of power does genuinely seem to come from it, it is not the sort of power she desires or hopes for. It's these things that make the characters compelling to me in the story -- the way they react to what's around them, the things they acknowledge or don't, the way they delude themselves.

Robinson doesn't give us descriptions of their internal life. He seems to have all of who they are in his mind, and then he jumps us into the fully formed characters, much like the way he jumps us into the action with the Festival, and just lets them start interacting, allowing us to figure out who they are as we can. I, for one, dig that technique, although it leaves many characters seeming like sketches.